Since we're on the subject, has anybody heard the latest on MSE losing their AV certification? I have to assume that Microsoft quickly deployed a team to work on a fix to get their cert. back. Should we be looking elsewhere for free AV programs. I am using Avast on my gaming computer and it's decent but I'm not in love with it.

Daemon Tools Lite for mounting disc images. IMO, You need something like this these days since optical media is dissapearing. Heck, I don't even have an optical drive in my new rig that I built in August.

Other programs are probably more specific to your usage. CPUZ and HWMonitor are must-haves for me with new builds to make sure everything is running properly and temps are good.

For virtualization, I use both VMWare Player (free for home use) and Virtualbox.For Ripping, I still find that DVD Decrypter works well with older DVDs and mainstream TV shows.With that said, I still use Gordian Knot to encode my DVDs into Divx .avi files (I have little to no need for .mkv files, as the quality gain is lost to the speed of a divx encode).For cutting,splicing, and light re-encode jobs, I use Virtualdub and TMPGEncMedia Player: I whole heartedly agree on VLC (works with everything I've got)Compression: I now use 7-zip for everything (even the occasional .rar file)For some reason, I still prefer using WinAmp, for my MP3s.

Here's my list. Most of it is on Ninite.com which strips a lot of the bloatware out of the installers, especially for the runtimes

7-zipCDBurnerXPChrome, Opera or FirefoxCutePDFFoxit ReaderFilezillaK-Lite Codec pack (including Media Player Classic)Logmein, or Teamviewer for a PC I'm likely to be connecting to over WANMSE, Avast, or AVG Free. If you're building for idiots who click to win iPads, Russian brides, or to speed up their computer then MalwareBytes is mandatory.Notepad++OpenOfficePuttyRealVNC for LAN clients instead of Logmein or TeamviewerSpotifyThe GIMPTrillianWinDirStat

Then there's the runtime selection of Flash/Java which you only install if you absolutely can't live without it. Oracle and Adobe are like the pedophile rapists of the PC industry, as proven by most of the IT security experts on the planet.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

axeman wrote:Sumatra PDF over Foxit. Foxit is not that light anymore, and bundles toolbars now. Ewwww. Sure you can choose not to install them, but maybe I'm having a brain-fart day, and I click next, next, next as usual.

I still keep around a real PDF app for the odd cases, but I have been using Chrome to read PDF files ever since it first gained the ability to do so. If the document does not contain complex graphics (usually motherboard manuals) or has some weird fonts, it renders fine.

The Model M is not for the faint of heart. You either like them or hate them.